Lazaridis ICF's man of vision

Donate and invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the community? Check.

Set Waterloo on a path to become a global leader in quantum information research? Check.

Mike Lazaridis keeps adding to an already remarkable list of accomplishments, and he seems to be just sharpening his pencil.

The BlackBerry co-founder and philanthropist was honoured in New York Friday with the Intelligent Community Forum’s Visionary of the Year award.

That’s given out annually to someone who has taken a leadership role in promoting broadband technology and applications as an essential and transformative utility in the digital age.

For Lazaridis, the importance of broadband connectivity hits close to home.

Literally.

When he was building a residence in a rural area just outside of Waterloo, Lazaradis said he was as concerned about access to a high-speed Internet connection as he was about any of the other services required to make the property self-sufficient: the septic system, the well, natural gas or even the windmill to generate electricity.

"One of the things I learned was that we could completely live independently from each other in our own fortresses," Lazaridis told the international crowd in New York Friday. "But the most important thing, that makes it all liveable, is connectivity to each other and to all of the information and entertainment that’s out there through these broadband services."

That’s a key idea for the ICF, which promotes the use of information and communication technologies like high-speed Internet connectivity to foster economic and social development in communities.

Lazaridis outlined some of the history behind the pioneering communications device he developed, and the BlackBerry business he started with a $15,000 loan from his parents (along with a matching provincial student venture loan) when he was just out of university.

Why build that business in Waterloo and not Silicon Valley?

It was the "very deep and committed entrepreneurial and innovative culture" of the region, he said, tied to the cutting-edge research that was, and still is, being conducted at the University of Waterloo.

"There was a real can-do spirit there – take on the world from a tiny community in the middle of Ontario," said Lazaridis.

That same spirit is behind his more recent ventures in Waterloo – the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Institute for Quantum Computing.

Then there’s the $100-million Quantum Valley Investment Fund, which Lazaridis launched earlier this year with longtime friend and business partner Doug Fregin to commercialize the "breakthrough" technologies developed by researchers in the field of quantum information science.

"Our goal is to establish the Waterloo region as the Quantum Valley of Canada," said Lazaridis.

In the meantime, that iconic BlackBerry device continues to earn him a following.

At Friday’s ICF event at a film studio in the middle of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Lazaridis happily posed for photos with a number of loyal BlackBerry users from around the world, including one or two from Stratford.